Gather round children. Let grandma tell you of a time long long ago when the internet was young. And how in those days every company knew it was the "next thing" but didn't know what to do about it. This is what gave us the "internet button" ... this was a button added to some keyboards that said "internet" since people wanted a computer "with internet" and if it has the button ...well... then it must have that.

Presumably it opened a browser window or something. No one really knows.

@futurebird

I assume we are roughly the same age, but i really don't recall the Internet button...

@Lily_and_frog The old HP keyboards had an entire top row of buttons for internet related things.

I actually have this generic brand keyboard under my desk collecting dust and cat hair. It's my emergency keyboard when the charge goes out of my wireless. It can't be too old, maybe a decade, because it is USB.

@futurebird

@paul @futurebird

I see my own words on your monitor in the background and it feels like an out of body experience!!! Lol

Cool. Back then I had a very cheap outdated Asus desktop running on Ubuntu (I forgot about it!). No fancy newfangled internet keyboards for me!

Shortly after I moved to a decent hp laptop. One that replacing the battery was as easy as changing the CD.

Gather round children. Let grandma tell you of a time long long ago when the internet was young. And how in those days every company knew it was the "next thing" but didn't know what to do about it. This is what gave us the "internet button" ... this was a button added to some keyboards that said "internet" since people wanted a computer "with internet" and if it has the button ...well... then it must have that.

Presumably it opened a browser window or something. No one really knows.

@paul @futurebird

What were they doing?

@shippychaos @futurebird
I remember when aol doubled my homework media costs by switching from floppies to CDs.

@futurebird Lol, oh yeah, I remember that. Actually, it's still in the official keyboard specs and can be programmed in on programmable keyboards I believe.

(And yeah, all it did was launch the default browser.)

@Lily_and_frog They would open your default internet browser, email client, acted like shortcut keys, forward (alt+right), backward (alt+left arrow), etc. You could set them to do anything, really. @futurebird

@shippychaos

I remember some kid at school trying to trade me like 10 AOL discs for one of the video games I'd burned saying "but this is like 10,000 hours of internet!

Gather round children. Let grandma tell you of a time long long ago when the internet was young. And how in those days every company knew it was the "next thing" but didn't know what to do about it. This is what gave us the "internet button" ... this was a button added to some keyboards that said "internet" since people wanted a computer "with internet" and if it has the button ...well... then it must have that.

Presumably it opened a browser window or something. No one really knows.

@futurebird I remember when access to the internet came on a CD

@futurebird @aj they also put an Internet buttons on flip phones but the Internet access was 55 cents per 25kb so your life and visions of your destroyed financial future flashed before your eyes if you accidentally clicked it

Gather round children. Let grandma tell you of a time long long ago when the internet was young. And how in those days every company knew it was the "next thing" but didn't know what to do about it. This is what gave us the "internet button" ... this was a button added to some keyboards that said "internet" since people wanted a computer "with internet" and if it has the button ...well... then it must have that.

Presumably it opened a browser window or something. No one really knows.

@joannaholman @futurebird I remember that! Except the internet button doesn't even go to the open internet by default. It goes to Optus Zoo or Bigpond Mobile. And some of the menus are free to browse because they want you to spend $5 on a Crazy Frog ringtone or whatever. But if you end up on the open web, you're basically calling a bankruptcy lawyer afterwards.

And before that, it was WAP codes you had to call. Like *607# for the weather.

Gather round children. Let grandma tell you of a time long long ago when the internet was young. And how in those days every company knew it was the "next thing" but didn't know what to do about it. This is what gave us the "internet button" ... this was a button added to some keyboards that said "internet" since people wanted a computer "with internet" and if it has the button ...well... then it must have that.

Presumably it opened a browser window or something. No one really knows.

@aj @futurebird I still distinctly remember the first time I accessed internet on a phone. It was in my later high school years. Telstra had a promotion for one free week of mobile data during that time it was otherwise absurdly expensive. Reading my email on the bus in plain text on a screen an inch wide felt like a wonder

Gather round children. Let grandma tell you of a time long long ago when the internet was young. And how in those days every company knew it was the "next thing" but didn't know what to do about it. This is what gave us the "internet button" ... this was a button added to some keyboards that said "internet" since people wanted a computer "with internet" and if it has the button ...well... then it must have that.

Presumably it opened a browser window or something. No one really knows.

@joannaholman @futurebird I had a Nokia and then a Motorola RAZR that allowed side loading J2ME apps.

By the time I had the RAZR, data had come down in price enough that it worked out cheaper to sideload a messenger app and use data than to SMS.

So I ended up installing MSN (I think), Helix (which was an MP3 player), and Opera. Opera downloaded websites, then reformatted them and massively compressed images.